Seib & Wessel: What We’re Reading Monday

Obama’s Recipe for Boosting the Middle Class

Eight years ago, Barack Obama – then in his sixth month as a U.S. senator – told the graduating class at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., that technology and globalization were eroding the foundations of the American middle class and that the most important role for government was to equip Americans with the education (the human capital, economists call it) to compete in a higher-tech, more globalized world.

Associated Press

This week, Mr. Obama, now in his fifth year as president of the United States, returns to Knox College. To a remarkable degree, nearly everything he said about the middle class, technology and globalization back in 2005 could be said today.

The median income of American households – the ones in the statistical middle – is nearly 5% lower, adjusted for inflation, than it was when the economy resumed growing in mid-2009. Even more stunning, it’s nearly 8% lower than it was back in 2000. In many ways, the past decade has been a lost decade for the American middle class.

Two big developments diverted Mr. Obama in his earlier vow to bolster the middle class. One was the financial crisis and ensuing recession. But the president’s team argues that the U.S. economy has healed sufficiently for him to take a longer-term view. The other was the big budget deficit. But the White House has decided it has done enough to deal with the near-term deficit to avoid a financial catastrophe and hasn’t much chance of striking a deficit compromise with congressional Republicans.

So the president is trying to change the subject (and get beyond all those headlines about the IRS, Benghazi and NSA surveillance) and return to making the case that there are things that government can do that will help American workers to prosper in the coming decade.

“Over the next several weeks, the President will deliver speeches that touch on the cornerstones of what it means to be middle class in America: job security, a good education, a home to call your own, affordable health care when you get sick, and the chance to save for a secure, dignified retirement,” Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer said in an email Sunday.

“It starts,” Mr. Obama said in a 2011 speech in Osawatomie, Kan., “by making education a national mission.” In his 2013 State of the Union address and in his budget, the president pressed his case for investing heavily in pre-K education, improving job-training programs and restraining the rise in college tuition (in ways other than increasing federal student aid.) Expect more of the same in this week’s speech.

It’s not a new diagnosis. But as Mr. Obama put it in 2005: “If you’ve got the skills, you’ve got the education, and you have the opportunity to upgrade and improve both, you’ll be able to compete and win anywhere. If not, the fall will be further and harder than it ever was before.”

–David Wessel

What We’re Writing

The most recent crisis in Congress was resolved with a deal on presidential appointments, but Washington has a bigger problem: a collapse in public confidence. There’s a way out, writes Jerry Seib.

Our Videos

On “Seib & Wessel”‘s The Roundtable, WSJ’s Colleen McCain Nelson and Neil King say the president doesn’t have a big policy win six months into his second term, his immigration effort looks shaky and he has been forced to defend Obamacare anew. Is there a comeback plan?Watch more segments from “Seib & Wessel”:

Bob Litt, general counsel for the director of national intelligence, offers a (long) defense of federal government’s high-tech surveillance, calling it effective, appropriate and consistent with the Constitution, the law of the land and American values. [DNI]

Robert Samuelson says that one large and troubling consequence of the deep recession is a loss of economic confidence even among Americans who have weathered the downturn and its consequences just fine. [Washington Post]

An NRA-backed effort to recall Colorado legislators who voted for gun-control legislation is fizzling. [Mother Jones]

At the behest of Egypt’s army, a panel of legal experts has begun revising the constitution the country’s previous Islamist government drew up, with an eye toward putting the new version to a public referendum quickly. [Reuters]

Amid widening dissatisfaction among Brazilians and an economic slowdown, there’s talk — no more than that, so far — that still-popular Lula da Silva may seek to succeed his hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff. A recent poll shows voters would prefer him over her, 41% to 30%. [FT]

Economic reform is underway in Cuba, manifesting itself in agricultural reform, a formalized progressive tax code, and liberalized migration laws. As the face of Cuba changes and its economy expands, Julia Sweig (@JuliaSweig) and Michael Bustamante argue that President Obama must reconsider the U.S.’s relationship with the country to allow it to become an “open, democratic society.” [Foreign Affairs]

Mike Feinsilber, who was Helen Thomas‘ rewrite man for a dozen years before he left UPI for AP, remembers her: “Her dictation was complete, but ragged. She needed her ghost writers more than most.” [AP] And Karen Tumulty (@ktumulty) reflects on how Ms. Thomas inspired the next generation of women journalists. “What she what she taught us was that there was value in making powerful people uncomfortable.” [Washington Post]

Over 15 months, liberal groups won waivers of fees for Freedom of Information Act requests to the Environmental Protection Agency 59% of the time versus 39% for conservative groups, a Politico analysis finds. Liberal groups made eight times as many requests. Success rates would have been equal had EPA approved just four more of the conservatives’ 31 requests. Media organizations got fee waivers 88% of the time they requested them. [Politico]

Sign of the Times

Minor milestones we’ve spotted:

President Obama averaged 47.9% job approval during his 18th quarter in office, the second consecutive quarter his approval has declined. It increased for five quarters leading up to his 2012 re-election. [Gallup]

As the stock market climbs, 11 more U.S. companies plan initial public offerings this week. [Fortune]

For the second quarter, GE reported 21% year-over-year growth in orders from China, 20% from the U.S. and 2% from Europe (vs. minus 17% in the first quarter.) [WSJ]

House prices in the euro zone fell 1.3% in the first quarter of 2013 to a seven-year low. Irish home prices are at their lowest since 2000; Austria’s are higher than at any time in the 12 years that the ECB has been keeping track. [FT]

The London Underground is home to its own genetically unique species of mosquito, the Culex molestus. [New Scientist]

So far this year, permission to sail through melting ice via the Arctic between Asia and Europe has been granted to 204 ships, up from 46 in 2012 and just 4 in 2010. [FT]

Since 1985, life expectancy has risen by 13 years for men in New York, compared with eight years for women. Fewer than one in five Manhattanites is obese. [New York Daily News]

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